


What a Lovely Way to Burn

by 221b_hound



Series: The Gladstone Variations (AU of Guitar Man) [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Laughter During Sex, M/M, Music, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, a win/win bet, music and sex, sex and love, trying to play an instrument while your honey gives you a blow job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:19:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes loves solving crimes with John Watson. He loves playing music with him. He loves laughing with him. He especially loves laughing with him when they have sex, and he's got a terrific new scenario for achieving that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What a Lovely Way to Burn

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from 'Fever', written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell in 1956, covered by almost everyone: Peggy Lee, Helen Shapiro, The Cramps, Michael Buble, Beyonce, The Muppets and Joe Cocker to name a few.

Sherlock sat at the dining table contemplating the harbinger of the billow of steam that rolled out of the bathroom. It would take hours for the blood-and-Fabreze mixture to usefully affect the hair and fragments of bone in the clay pot. That was time, Sherlock knew, he could profitably spend on other pursuits. Softer and sweeter (and harder and faster) pursuits.

(And he was almost appalled at the turns of phrase his brain was providing, but it could not denied that even facile innuendo brought up flashes of memory, of John's eyes scrunched shut, or wide, wide open, and his back arching, muscles flexing in shoulders and chest and upper arms and thighs, and his nipples tight and hard under Sherlock's mouth, all of which in turn [collectively or individually] made Sherlock's breath quicken and his penis thicken, and he found he didn't mind all that much really. The exploration of every part of John with every part of himself was proving to be his favourite leisure activity, alongside making music with John.)

Steam billowing from the bathroom meant that John had finished in the shower and was even now naked (wearing not even a towel) as he sauntered to their room to find his relocated dressing gown. This being a post-case morning, with no clinic and no rehearsals meant that John would laze about a little while, not bothering to dress. Even all these years after the army, it was still a luxury to John to not have to be half-dressed in readiness for sudden attack or emergency.

Sherlock's own state of _deshabille_ – he was clad in faded pyjama bottoms and ratty T-shirt – was much more to do with laziness, and the gentle remnants of post-case, post-coital bliss in his veins.

But the coitus was 12 hours ago, and now Sherlock was feeling not so much post- as pre-coital and how had he not ever known, before he'd had to leave for that terrible year Away, how much he loved the smell of John clean and damp, fresh from the shower.

He could hear John singing in the bedroom, and John's feet moving in a syncopated rhythm on the floor - dancing, then, as he found his dressing gown on its hook behind the door, where Sherlock had relocated it from the bathroom. And there... the contemplative silence as he found the note Sherlock had left in the pocket thereof, apropos of last night’s post-sex ludicrous boasting.

_It's a wager._

An infectious giggle started and stopped. Sherlock grinned. His heart beat faster; and his penis reliably heated and thickened in anticipation. _This will become a Pavlovian response to his laugh if I’m not careful_. He didn’t feel inclined to be careful, though.

How had he not known, either, what an aphrodisiac John's laugh could be. Well, there had been indications in the past, of course. There had been physiological responses to that sound long before Sherlock had allowed his brain to know what to do with them; long before he knew those responses were reciprocated.

One of Sherlock's biggest surprises in his still shiny-bright physical relationship with John was laughter.  Not that they hadn’t laughed often (and often in ways others believed inappropriate) before the Year in Hell.  It was, instead, the new contexts in which humour and happiness kept finding him. Not used to either, he found now, a year after his return, that they laughed with and at each other and the world more than ever.  They laughed on cases and at crime scenes; when they played music together, or at band rehearsals.

But laughter in bed, well, that was something else.  Sherlock's sexual experience was limited, true, and had been gained long ago under circumstances where bedroom laughter had been more than a little _not good_.

The first time John had laughed in bed, Sherlock had frozen, hurt and mortified, for a handful of heartbeats before John, still giggling, had nuzzled against Sherlock's sensitive inner thigh, kissed a passage over Sherlock's spent cock and come-splattered belly and settled with his nose pressed into Sherlock's throat, murmuring all the while "You're a genius. Brilliant. At everything. I should have known you'd be brilliant at this too, Christ, you can even do stuff with your fucking _toes_."

At the last declaration, John had started sucking in Sherlock's earlobe and wriggling his entire length along Sherlock's entire length.  "Is it too kinky of me to want you to do that thing with your toes again?"

Sherlock had laughed then. "Of course not. I have some other uses to which we can put them, if you like."

At which John had groaned lustily, snickered wickedly, then scooted back down Sherlock's body, kiss-licking a trail until he reached those wonderful toes and sucked a few of them into his mouth. Feeling John's tongue between his toes, Sherlock had spread the toes - and his legs – wide, ready only minutes after coming to work his way up to another go.

They spent much of that night laughing.

They'd had enough grief, those two, before they met, as well as during the year Away. 

Sherlock felt he had been the source of enough pain in John’s life. Being the source of something better was a revelation and a joy.  John's laughter made Sherlock lighter.  It always had. Now it made him both light and full in ways Sherlock could barely describe. The best thing to do with that knowledge, Sherlock decided, was to find ways to return the gift. He rather liked to create opportunities for laugher-infused sex.

Opportunities like this one.

The gentle padding of feet down the hall, slightly uneven, indicated that John was indeed carrying his guitar.

"You daft beggar," said John affectionately, kissing Sherlock's forehead as he passed, "You do realise that this is one of those win/win bets, don't you?"

"Of course," Sherlock replied, feeling the kiss on his skin like the sweetest, most perfect kind of brand. Of course John's kisses didn't leave visible marks, but Sherlock felt the marks that each one left anyway. "Think of it as a test of concentration."

John slung the guitar across his shoulders, then dropped one hand to smooth over Sherlock's burgeoning erection. "If you like. _Oh, hey!"_

This because Sherlock had run his hand from John's knee to thigh, underneath the dressing gown, and up, over the curve of John's backside.

"Concentrate, John," Sherlock admonished him.

John laughed as Sherlock continued to feather his fingers up and down John's thigh and left buttock underneath the robe. "You don't fight fair."

"I fight to win."

"Me too." John strummed a few chords then began to pick out a melody.

"That's new."

"It is."

"What's the lyric?"

"You expect me to give it up, just like that? _whuuuuup!"_ John skittered away from Sherlock's wandering hand, the melody dissolving into a discordant twang, then laughed again. He took up the opening bars once more. "Well, have at me, Crumpet. Do your worst."

"My best, you mean."

John's grin only broadened as he began to play in earnest, a cheerful set of notes and chords, with a sting of minor notes. He stood with his feet braced a little apart.

Sherlock rose from his chair and followed him. Slid his hand up John's thigh again, beneath the robe, then danced his elegant fingers in a teasing brush across thighs, arse, lower back, down again to run a finger delicately just down the cleft. John's muscles clenched briefly, then relaxed.

Sherlock got onto his knees behind John and lifted the dressing gown so he could press kisses against the skin where thigh met backside, across ticklish thighs and sensitive bum. He swiped a lick, then kissed again, butterfly kisses that made John giggle some more.

John kept playing, even when Sherlock leaned forward to nuzzle against the cleft, nosing into the clean, warm crease, pressing random kisses against the smooth skin closest to his lips. John's breath grew faster, but his fingers remained nimble. John was obviously enjoying all the sensations, but no longer ticklish. If anything, the attention made him play faster, more boldly.

Sherlock breathed hard, poked his tongue out to press against the cleft, then pressed it deeply into the crease. He was too low down to reach the most sensitivie part yet, and all John did was shift to stand with his legs further apart, giving Sherlock access. Sherlock nudged further in, while he trailed fingertips down the back of John's thighs, behind his knees.

Delightfully, John's key response was to arch and thrust his hips and arse back against Sherlock's mouth and nose. John's breath began to hitch, but he kept on playing.

Well, until Sherlock's tongue wriggled far enough into the warmth to poke first against John’s tightening balls, then over the perineum and finally against the bud of wrinkled, delicate skin it had been seeking. Finding it, Sherlock’s tongue burrowed further in. John’s sharp yip of surprised pleasure was gratifying.

It was, frankly, a bit suffocating, to be so situated without using his hands to part John's cheeks, but Sherlock oddly enjoyed the closeness, the heat and intimacy and even the lack of air, face pressed deep while all he could hear was the increasingly sloppy bars of the guitar ( _that song is about us, whatever it is_ ) and John's breath growing ragged.

"Christ, Sherlock," the moan escaped John. His fingers faltered on the strings, then took up the music again as Sherlock withdrew and let the dressing gown fall over John's ( _wonderful, delicious, perfect_ ) arse again.

Still kneeling behind, Sherlock pillowed his forehead on John's, well, cheek, and now let his hands drift around John's thighs and up, not touching, simply seeking the telltale heat, and oh, it was not difficult to find, and as his fingers bumped against John's erection, poking through the folds at the front of the robe, John gasped, faltered again, laughed again.

With a pleased hum, Sherlock used his hands on John's legs to make John turn.

The dressing gown was still folded in front, with the crown of John's erection appearing and disappearing behind the draped cotton, an action that was clearly stimulating on its own. John's guitar was worn high enough that there was room enough for Sherlock to get closer, if he wanted to.

He wanted to.

First, though, Sherlock sat on his haunches and just looked. Licked his lips. Looked some more. He could tell John's eyes were getting glassy with want, and then John chuckled and undulated through a raunchy dance move of the kind that had earned him the nickname Doctor Sex. The move parted the curtain of the robe briefly, then covered him up again.

Fingers practically itching, Sherlock reached out, took each side of the cloth in each hand, and parted them to see the view.

John moaned. Kept playing, the cheerful tune slowing to a ballad-rhythm. Kept dancing, slow and sensuous.

Sherlock leaned forward to kiss the head, and then sat back on his heels. Leaned forward slightly less and then stuck out his tongue to bridge the distance and took a tiny lick of the sticky slit. John's playing faltered again, then resumed, picking up pace.

Then Sherlock reached out with his long fingers and stroked, lightly, along the shaft, over the head, down again and underneath. Barely touching one moment, stroking firmly the next. For a good while, he fondled and tickled, touched and admired, kissed and played.

When Sherlock moved suddenly to take John in his mouth, John reacted so intensely, his hips jerking forward, that his fingers missed all the strings and the bottom of the guitar smacked against the top of Sherlock's head.

"Shit, sorry!"

Sherlock, mouth full, ran his hands down John's thighs to indicate there was no harm done, but he sucked so cleverly at that point that it happened again, more painfully. Sherlock pulled off (with scientifically applied friction), glanced up and John (who was half way between apologetic and laughing again) and grinned.

"Concentrate!" he said.

"I am concentrating,"  John declared with breathless good humour, "Just on the wrong thing."

Sherlock replied by swallowing him down again.

John gave up trying to play at the same time. He held the guitar away from his body with one hand, buried the fingers of his other in Sherlock's hair, and sighed a happy moan-sigh while Sherlock finished playing John like the most wonderful kind of instrument. He made John mutter and huff and move like his soul and his body were made to sing under Sherlock's maestro hands, until his voice was crying out, _Sherlock, god, oh god, Sherlock, god yes_ and hit creaking notes, high and low, that were broken in the best and most perfect way.

John shuddered, yelped and nearly folded to the floor as Sherlock suckled his over-sensitive and well-spent cock clean. Sherlock managed to catch him around the hips, avoid being smacked in the head a final time with the guitar, then plant a series of quick kisses on the top of John's thighs before gently pulling the robe closed again.

With an effort, John got his knees to lock and he leaned into his kneeling lover, whose face was now pressed against his belly.

"Looks like I’ll be losing the bet," he admitted, gently chuckling.

"You lose concentration much too easily," Sherlock told him sternly, then nuzzled his face into the cloth and John's belly as John stroked fingers through his hair.

"Well, let's see how you do," John said. He unslung the guitar, propped it against the nearest chair, and pulled Sherlock up to his feet, mainly so he could more easily slip his hand into Sherlock's pyjamas and enjoy the heat and hardness and dampness of Sherlock's arousal in his palm.

Sherlock expected John to be more direct in his approach, but after that first, brief touch, John handed Sherlock his violin and bow then stood behind him, leaning into Sherlock's back, chest to spine, face nestled between his shoulder blades, that wonderful, mobile mouth simply breathing over the thin cotton of Sherlock’s T-shirt.

Sherlock lifted the violin and  bow, and played a few notes of one of John's favourite melodies. Mozart. _Eine Kleine Nachtmusic._ Not complex by any means, but cheerful and pleasing.

It was initially distracting, in a way it should not have been, how John did nothing sexual as Sherlock began to play. He only pressed his front to Sherlock's back affectionately, the way a cat might lean into someone. When John moved, it wasn't to stroke erogenous zones but to wrap his arms around the taller man's waist in a gentle hug. As Sherlock's body moved with the movement of his instrument and the music, John simply melted into the motion. His arms curved up to ghost underneath Sherlock's own, not influencing or guiding, but following. 

 _How does he do that?_ John somehow melded himself to Sherlock's motion, following the lift and sway, the dip of knees, the shift of hips, the firm frame of the left arm, holding the violin, the arc and sweep of the right as the bow slid across the strings. Without interfering with the music, John cuddled against Sherlock and moved with him.

Given the nature of the wager, Sherlock did try to throw John off his task: making a dramatic low sweep with the bow at one point, at another bending his own knees to bring his body low then high, mimicking the shape of Mozart's tune, but John was wholly part of the motion now, his body flowing with Sherlock's body through the music. It was not at all sexual and at the same time perhaps the most sensual thing Sherlock had ever experienced in his life.

John finally moved to slide his hands under Sherlock's T-shirt, skimming them over Sherlock's belly. Again, there was not attempt towards overtly sexual touching. No pinching of nipples or teasing play with his navel. Just John's strong, warm, practical hands stroking his stomach and ribs, while the man himself cuddled closer to Sherlock’s back, his stillness tracing Sherlock’s every shift and stretch of muscle. 

Sherlock wondered briefly that he was still so hard, but he was, his cock thick and heavy, his cotton pyjamas a disconcerting and too-light friction against the head. He concentrated instead on the Mozart. He was aware that he had somehow skipped a few phrases; that somehow being held in this flowing frame of affection had muddied his mind much more than John's hand on his cock would have done.

He immersed himself in the music again, in the warmth of John's body against his, and gave his body over to the motion of song, attenuating his body with the high notes...

...and that's when John, swift and wicked as you please, slid down Sherlock's body, hooking his hands into Sherlock's pyjama pants and pulling them down to Sherlock's shins in one smooth motion. It was an expert debagging. Sherlock was shocked momentarily, his playing stopped for two notes before he began again because he was not, was absolutely _not_ , going to be derailed by such a sophomore prank.

And yet there was no indication of ridicule, although John had now pressed his lips to Sherlock's bare lower back for a quick kiss. He could feel the smile on John's mouth as those lips trailed quick, light kisses all over his lower spine, over his arse, down one thigh and then the other. The whole activity still sang of fondness and delight.

A little swipe of the tip of a tongue against the back of his knees was ticklish - Sherlock Holmes had not been ticklish after the age of four, until he'd met John Watson - and a few more notes were lost before Sherlock refocused and went at Mozart with a will once more.

And then John, on his knees behind Sherlock, braced those sturdy hands on Sherlock's long thighs and... snuggled. Against Sherlock’s bum. Dropped a kiss or two on the curve and slope of an arse that Sherlock knew all too well was positively a fetish for John, and pillowed his cheek and brow against that warm mound of flesh and just _cuddled_.

It was utterly ridiculous and not sexual at all, but Sherlock responded with a gasp and a sighing moan, his cock growing harder and wetter while his heart grew larger and softer.

 _This is not how to seduce someone, John_ , he thought, but he knew that he was wrong, utterly wrong, and that John Watson had found a new way to confound his expectations.

When John moved again, it was to trail a line of kisses across Sherlock's right buttock, over his hip (under his bowing arm, and Sherlock did not even have to be careful about that - John managed to be deft and graceful enough to time his shift to avoid an elbow to the head) until he knelt in front of Sherlock's bare thighs and jutting erection.

John sat on his heels and admired the view.

He proceeded to drive Sherlock to distraction by repeating Sherlock’s own earlier strategy of simply   _looking_ at the impressive erection before him. Smiling at it. Breathing on it. Sherlock was pretty sure he'd missed entire sections of the melody and was starting from the top again when John rose up on his knees, stretched _above_ the prize on offer and, in synch with his lover's swaying body, lifted the T-shirt to plant a delicate kiss on Sherlock's navel. Swirled his tongue into the sweet little depression, kissed it again, then the smooth abdomen below it. 

Sherlock was determined not to beg, but honestly, if he got any harder at this point he might. He tried rolling his hips suggestively forward, and John obligingly bent his head to kiss the hot, flushed crown that was so appealingly presented, but then he sat back and looked up at Sherlock. His smile was, astonishingly, sweet. Not predatory, not even wicked. Just happy and full of love.

Then John opened his mouth and slid it over Sherlock's cock, and the music stuttered and went completely off kilter for a bar and a half until Sherlock got his brain and his fingers back online while those lips, that tongue, slid up and down his shaft like poetry.

A rhythm was established then, and Sherlock was able to do Mozart justice for a while, though his thighs trembled with effort and desire. The pyjama pants around his shins meant he couldn’t stand as wide as he'd wish at this point, so Sherlock managed to bend his knees a little,  spread them just so, and it may have not been the most elegant stance but seriously, **_seriously_** , who the fuck cared about looking elegant if they could have that wonderful, that superb, that positively brilliant man on his knees in front of them, their aching cock in his exquisite mouth and his beautiful, purposeful hands on their hips?

For a brief moment, the exquisite mouth pulled off and away, and that was more distracting even than the perfect balance of suction and friction it had provided. The loss of the tip of that mobile tongue (that found all the ridges and the wet slit of his cock) left him, dear god, _bereft_. But when Sherlock looked down, John was opening wide to take him in again and it's entirely possible that Sherlock whimpered before finding the melody again.

His hands played Mozart and his body responded to John playing him, and finally John stopped playing _fair_. With his tongue and lips still sliding eloquently along and around and over Sherlock's shaft, John slipped a spit-slicked finger between Sherlock's bowed legs and into the cleft and then around and around and around the sensitive hole and, Sherlock moaning (intriguingly in a note that harmonised with Mozart), John slipped that finger into Sherlock's body and against that internal spot of perfect pleasure.

Whereupon Sherlock lost complete control of the bow on the up-stroke, and it flew from his hand, across the room, and Sherlock did not care one solitary damn because he was busy burying the fingers of his happily freed hand in John's hair, rocking his hips, and coming and coming and coming and coming, babbling _JohnJohnJohnGodYesOhmyJohnmymymymymyyesmyJoooooohn._

Then he folded, graceful as a collapsing origami tower, and John laughed against the skin that slid past his lips. A graceful man himself, he captured the violin and set it aside as Sherlock continued to slide down, curled against him, then followed him down until they were cuddled side by side on the floor, the little clothing they wore askew, skin hot and damp, breaths coming in happy, panting breaths.

John gathered Sherlock close against him, pressed his lips to Sherlock's shoulder then neck then chin and cheek, flicked his tongue along the ridge of Sherlock's ear then kissed that too.

"Anything you can do, I can do better," John sang, voice lilting with joyful humour, "I can do anything better than you."

Sherlock nipped John's cheek in retaliation, then relented at the yelp and kissed the spot better. "I would call that a draw. You stopped playing."

John peppered Sherlock's face with quick kisses. "I forgot all the notes. But you threw away your bow."

"Hardly surprising. One cannot have one's prostate and cock stimulated simultaneously and so expertly and continue to play Mozart. It simpy can't be done,"

"Hmm." John nuzzled against Sherlock's ear and began to sing softly, the words that went with the music he'd attempted to play for Sherlock.

_My body is a song_

_You're learning all the variations_

_The syncopation of my heart_

_And all my exhalations_

_Every scar for which I fought_

_The symphony of every thought_

_The words for all the days I lost_

_And harmonies for what it cost_

_You make my life, these jarring notes, a melody_

_You make this broken instrument_

_An orchestra of blood and bone_

_You make so much music out of me_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Some samples of Fever on YouTube:
> 
>  
> 
> [Peggy Lee](http://youtu.be/X7_k_0dKknA)
> 
>  
> 
> [The Cramps](http://youtu.be/lbuGWCmbchA)
> 
>  
> 
> [The Muppets](http://youtu.be/0yvHWyvexZA)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Also the piece Sherlock plays, [Eine Kleine Nachtmusic.](http://youtu.be/kmOov7Rx1cs)
> 
> The piece John plays and later sings is one of mine.


End file.
